RE: [registrars] Nominations for Chair.

["Bhavin Turakhia" <bhavin.t@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi jay,

The question you pose is very open-ended, and here are my thoughts on that -

1. I never took up the nomination because I had 1 or 2 or 3 specific
objectives in mind which I wish to achieve. It was not a case of having 2
specific changes I want to bring about, but the ability to be able to
officially work towards and bring about several positive changes that I have
wanted to in the past and will continue to want to in the future

2. In order to prove my point and partly answer your question but not
exactly in the way you probably intended it to be - let me spend exactly 10
minutes (nothing more nothing less) in penning down random issues that I
know I have wanted to work on in the past but did not have a step up forum
to do so -

(a) The biggest and most important issue that concerns me is that the
Registrar constituency has absolutely NO outreach. I know so many Registrars
who are not even aware upon accreditation that there exists such a
constituency where they may step up, and participate. It is so ironical that
within 24 hours of someone getting accredited they get an email from tens of
batch pool operators, but there is no official invitation mail sent out to a
fresh registrar with regards to joining the registrars constituency mailing
list with simple basic instructions on how they may paricipate on the
mailing list and what all they may vote on and how this may affect their
business. This resuilts in lack of participation on the constituency and
therefore we cannot achieve better averages. Infact it is more embarassing
than admirable for me, that the 1 week out reach effort we conducted
resulted in more participants in the ICANN BUDGET process than the
constituency has seen in the last several years. There are many Registrars
in other countries who do not even know how they may go about participating
actively in constituency matters, and therefore we truly cannot represent
the diversity of Registrars that exist out there. And all this would take is
one simple email inviting a new Registrar on board upon accreditation

(b) I have always wanted a better website. I am not a stickler for any
frequent updates etc. I am ok if our constituency website does not really
have every little event that we discuss. However there are some basic things
I would want to see -

- a basic database which all of us have access to showing the contact point
for each registrar. I am tired of seeing and sending emails to the list
asking "who is the latest contact at network solutions?". If we had a simple
database with a simple authentication system which allows everyone to
maintain their latest contact information with an auto-reminder, this would
simplify processes

- a basic database containing the whois server of all registrars and the ip
address from which they make queries for whois requests which we could use
as has been discussed many times in the past

- better voting lists and ballot systems

All of the above are easy to work on. I have volunteered twice in the past
to get them done here in india at a dirt cheap cost with some companies we
have worked with. I am willing to take that up whether or not I actually get
elected.

(c) During the entire ICANN Budget process another idea that I was toying
with and would love to implement is actually taking off some burden from
ICANN. ICANN has conveniently increased the budget by stating that they are
spending a lot of money on registrar support and compliance issues. As a
constituency of Registrars I know for a fact that we can substitute costs of
millions with far lower costs by supporting some of these activities from
within the constituency. I am infact of belief that it is NOT ICANN's
repsonsibility to sit and respond to these complaints. It is so stupid for
DAN to have to send me an email sometimes for Whois inaccuracy complaints,
when I would much rather have Dan do far better things :). Moreover the
level of knowledge that we as Registrars have of our operations allow us to
perform a far better task of automating compliance audits than ICANN would.
It is dead simple for instance to add a script to the above website which
will check the whois server of each registrar and automatically alert if
some whois is down. We infact already have such a script that we use for our
transfer processing and I would gladly share it free. There has been much
random talk about how we as a constituency can manage our own compliance,
however I have not seen any implementation. Any such implementation will
only save ICANN and therefore in turn us, a lot of money

Infact Eric-Brunner Williams even spoke of possibilities where we as
Registrars or as a constituency would be willing to support ICANN's BCP, by
donating servers and other necessary resources. For most of us putting up
servers and bandwidth and some basic dev resources is pretty much a scratch
to our existing costs. For ICANN to do so the figures go in 5-6 digits.

(d) I have also been toying with the concept of a better budget structure
for the Registrar constituency. As of now as is clear on the list the
current budget structure is haphazard and the constituency has no formal
accounting processes. Infact there are some registrars who as startups from
other countries may also find paying for constituency membership a lil
expensive in the beginning. We could even have creative structures which
base the constituency membership fee as a 2 or 3 tier stagger model - with a
lower entry price and a higher price as you grow - just a thought

(e) there are countless registry issues I have wanted to DESPERATELY YELL
ABOUT in the past. But plain yelling in the constituency simply falls on
deaf ears. For instance few years ago, for over 4 months I had created a
riot about how the auto-renew period sucks because the registry ends up
keeping 6 bucks for 30-40 days for 40% domains which we do not even intend
to renew. For new registrars the moment they hit their 2nd year of
operations this creates a cash flow situation too. Chuck from verisign
infact eventually even made a presentation that they were contemplating to
change this and charge the auto-renew fee at the end of the 45 day period. I
see now that the .biz registry has proposed this which I view as positive.
However we still have thousands of dollars stuck with verisign simply due to
their auto-renew period policy which really helps noone. As a Registrar if I
did not have to get stuck with that working capital issue I would be able to
use it for marketing or advertising benefiting both the Registry and us. 

Then there are so many other registry issues which I have kept stifled - for
instance each registry has some weirdly different insurance requirement.
Most of them for no reason at all - 

- PIR wants a million bucks in insurance with their name on it
- Verisign wants 100,000 bucks with their name on it
- ICANN wants 500,000 bucks with noones name on it
- Neustar wants 1 million bucks with noones name on it

Each with different confusing requirements which do not make much sense. I
mean when .ORG was a part of verisign I did not need verisigns name on a 1
million dolalr policy. I always thought the split to PIR should not affect
anything except the connection protocol, but apparently that's not the case,
and I had a bitch of a time getting PIR added subsequently here in india,
cuz insurance is not a commodity product in india.

I could probably spend the next hour just penning out gripes with registries
:) - not because I don't like them, but because there are so many of them -
and that is only increasing. Think abt maintaining non-uniform business and
technology requirements across so many gtld registries at one time.


(f) It goes without saying that I want to do stuff about the ICANN budget. I
do not need to stress on that at all :)


Having penned all of the above in a hurry I must add that do not get me
wrong or misinterpret any of the above. I did not pen the above list to
answer Jay's questiobn about 2 or more changes I will do if I am elected.
Instead, this is for me too an exercise of introspection. I took 3 days to
decide as to whether I should apply for this post. In the end the decision
was made based on the fact that I have felt, as would have many of you,
frustration, at times for not being able to bring about certain changes
which directly affect my registrar business. I realise that all of us share
similar issues at all times. Therefore my contention was, instead of
stifling these issues and accepting them as they are, if I am getting an
opportunity to be able to work with members from within and outside the
constituency to voice these concerns and work on them officially, I should
take up that opportunity

I am not saying that the above 6 issues are the issues that are on the top
of my mind. What I am saying is that all of us have issues. I want this
opportunity to be able to do something about them. I am involved hands on
from the grass roots level in running my registrar operations. If the XML
spec of EPP changes I know about that. If ICANN brings up a new consensus
policy I know about that. I know every change that occurs and every change
that should occur because that is what I am doing 24 by 7 - running a
Registrar from bottoms up. There is no dearth of issues which we should look
at or changes we should bring about Jay and so asking for 2 changes that I
would bring about if I was elected is not the right question - because it is
very easy to answer

Instead the question that is important is - am I capable of bringing about
the changes. I would think so given the work I have done in the past. I
respect Jordyn tremendously too. I am quite certain both of us can do a
terrific job. I do not think either of us will have trouble listing out
things we want to change. I do however acknowledge that either of us will
have to work diligently in order to actually bring about those changes. I am
willing to do that to the best of my ability.


Best Regards
Bhavin Turakhia
Founder, CEO and Chairman
DirectI
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> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-registrars@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
> [mailto:owner-registrars@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Jay Westerdal
> Sent: Wednesday, September 01, 2004 12:14 AM
> To: 'Registrars Constituency'
> Subject: RE: [registrars] Nominations for Chair.
> 
> I have worked with both Jordyn Buchanan and Bhavin Turakhia 
> and they they are both great canidates for this position. So 
> both would have my vote at this point.
> 
> But as I can't vote for both, can the canidates tell me 2 
> things about what they would change in the constituency, and why?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Jay Westerdal
> Name Intelligence, Inc.
> http://www.nameintelligence.com 
>